Skirpstas and King Pour It On to Win the 2012 Turkeyfoot 2-Man Scramble

Pete Skirpstas and Jeremy King played flawless golf in the 2012 Turkeyfoot 2-Man ScrambleOn Saturday at the Turkeyfoot 2-Man Scramble, Jeremy King and Pete Skirpstas played ‘Maximum Golf’.

They shot a score that no one in the field would have predicted as the winning total before play began, maximizing every opportunity they had.

On a golf course with firm greens and difficult hole locations set near every edge and ridge that Charlie Mozingo could find, the pair shot a blazing 13-under par score of 58.

How ‘maximized’ was their round?

– Six birdies on the front nine for a score of 30, five birdies and an eagle on the back nine and a score 28;

– A bogey-free performance in which they won by two;

– On the drivable 14th hole, their closest tee shot was past the hole on the upper shelf with the pin set just below the ridge, leaving a shot almost impossible to get close. So they decided to take the ball short of the green in the fairway for an uphill chip. They promptly holed out the pitch shot;

– On the really difficult par-3 15th hole, they missed the green and left themselves a somewhat substantial putt for par from the edge of the rough. Just when it looked like the pair might make their first bogey of the day, they holed the putt from off the green.

It was a record-setting performance of which the pair should be proud.

Finishing in second place was the team of Lenton and Heim with a great score of 11-under par 60. Usually, such a score wins in a walk.

Dave Sotka and Nick Anagnost finished in third place at 10-under par, matching the sizzling back nine score of 28 by the winners.

For as great as those three teams played to earn the top spots, the way the results of the big skins game unfolded is more a story of unbelievable ‘good fortune’. Bob Burkheimer and partner Karim were last minute walk-up entries to the event on Saturday. On the par-4 5th hole, Burkheimer’s tee shot bounced untouched through the pine trees on the right and finished in the fringe pin high. With a swooping right-to-left putt from about 22 feet, Burkheimer putted first for the team and missed about 3 feet too high and past the hole. The ball stopped momentarily then started slowly creeping down the hill. You guessed it: the missed putt ended up in the bottom of the cup. More amazingly, even though the hole played a mere 275-yards, no other team eagled it. When Tim Davis’ team, playing as the last group of the day, chipped in for eagle on the par-5 16th hole to squash the only other skin outstanding (owned up to that point by Jeff Barbas and Joe Tornabene), Burkheimer and Karim won the entire skins pot: a whopping $1,280. Makes for a pretty happy last-minute decision to play, and some ‘good fortune’.

Thanks to Tim Davis, Charlie Mozingo and the rest of the staff at Turkeyfoot for another great spring scramble, as always. The golf course was in great condition and the field was a whopping 65 teams, showing that scratch tournament golf in Northeast Ohio is making a true resurgence.